Tag Archives: isolation

^^ A sentence many a man has said over the years and continues to say to this day.

“I want to be lean and strong”

^^ Something I’m pleased to announce more women are saying, it seems there has been a shift in them saying ‘I just want to be skinny’ to now learning the benefit of being lean and strong, it’s great to see.

While it is only my opinion, I feel everybody should be strong.

I’m not talking about record breaking strong, just strong enough to stay healthy and stave off the effects of ageing on the body.

These sports all centre around lifting:

– Weightlifting (olympic lifting)

– Body Building

– Powerlifting

– Strongman

– CrossFit (some may not like this one)

Did you know lifting weights can have the following positive effects on the body:

Personally I’d say the mental improvement is the pivotal one as this can have the biggest impact on a persons life in a very positive way.

However….

If you’re not an athlete and lift for health/confidence you should do it because you enjoy it, not because you feel you have to, that’s the secret to balance and long term sustainability.

Don’t eat yourself up if you miss a session, chalk it up to life and sue it as a rest day, that way you’ll be more motivated when you get to go in, excited to train in fact. Keep this in mind and you’ll find you don’t fall out of love with training.

What if lifting isn’t for you?

That’s cool, find soothing you do enjoy, here are some other options for improving strength and all achieving all the other benefits mentioned above:

If you find yourself short on time there are plenty of ways you can get a great workout in a very short space of time, keeping with the principle of 5×5 (as spoken about in the most recent post it has the ability to be adapted very easily) you will only need 2 moves in this workout, 1 Compound 1 Isolation, on up to 2 body parts (chest/back, shoulders/lats, Bi’s/Tri’s etc).

The difference you will find with this method is that you will use your 5×5 as a working warm up, meaning the first 4 sets of 5 are working up towards your absolute 5RM, one you hit your 5RM (make sure you feel every rep and can’t possibly squeeze out anymore) progress straight to the isolation exercise and begin to rep out until failure, then drop the weight 10% and keep pushing out reps with good form until you can’t do anymore before you drop the weight again, keep going until there is nothing left.